Candlemaking 101: The Workshop

Last week, thanks to help from my wonderful nephew, I finally got my craft room back in order:

Well, usable at least

This reminded me that I hadn't blogged about crafting in a while, so I thought I would do a few posts about candlemaking.  I'm not going to try to tell you how to get an organized workroom; clearly, it can be done in a more organized manner than shown above.  This post is more about what you will need to get started.

This picture shows most of the basic supplies:

1) A good work surface, either something you don't care about or something well-covered.  Note the wax stains.  Drips are common and accidents happen.
2) A hot plate of some kind.
3) A double boiler setup of some kind.  You boil water in the bottom pot and cover that with a pot with holes in the bottom so the steam can come through.  NEVER PUT A POT OF WAX DIRECTLY ON THE BURNER.  Don't worry, I'll remind you when I go through making a candle.
4) A spatula.  Silicone spatulas designed for high heat (not the cheapo ones) are perfect for stirring wax and working wax out of stubborn places.
5) Heat-resistant pads to put hot candles and wax pots on to cool.
6) Not shown: Oven mitt, apron, wax thermometer, and fire extinguisher.  Hmm, maybe that last should have been number 1.

Candle molds are great, but you don't have to start with them.  Tin and glass containers are excellent to learn in, and coffee cups are cheap at the dollar store.  If you look at the first pictures, you can see the types of containers I currently have in my craft room. 

I also have plastic and silicone molds not pictured.  Plastic molds are cheaper, but I'm not a fan of them.  I tend to prefer either metal molds or containers.

While you can use old tin cans, I recommend getting the pitchers made for melting wax.  The handle and the spout have saved me a lot of burns, and it can be hard to get a precise pour from a tin can.  However, if you are not sure you want to do much candlemaking, this isn't necessary.

You will, of course, need wax.  This pitcher is for beeswax, and that is what beeswax looks like when it is cool.  I prefer beeswax and soy because they are natural, but paraffin is pretty common.  I'll list my favorite candle supply websites below if you want to see prices, though I recommend ebay for beeswax.

   
Wax dyes and scents are optional when you are first starting out, but they certainly make candlemaking more fun.  You will also need wick (of course) and wick clips.  I forgot to pull out a wick clip for the picture, but you'll see it when I do a tutorial on making the actual candle.  (I believe that is soy wax in the glass cup, by the way.  It tends to come in flakes.)



As promised, some of my favorite candlemaking supply websites:
www.lonestarcandlesupply.com
www.fromnaturewithlove.com
www.specialtybottle.com
www.peakcandle.com
www.thecandlemakersstore.com
www.cierracandles.com

Screen Printed Gamer Onesies

Last night, I finally got to work on some new onesies.  I even experimented with a bib!  I don't know how screen printing is with a traditional system, but there really is an art to it with the Yudu.  I went through a great deal of paper practicing the new designs.  Just a hair too much / too little paint will ruin the whole thing.  I think I am getting better at it, though.  I found that after you flood the screen (pulling paint over the dry screen before putting the screen down on the object to be painted), there will be a lot of paint in the design.  A few pulls over paper will get the paint more even.

I must say that I am not impressed with my first attempt to mix the Yudu brand paint.  When I tried to mix purple, it came out a lot more brown than I am used to.  Thankfully, it dried into an okay dark, reddish purple color.  I think I'm going to try regular screen printing ink when this stuff runs out.  Despite the warnings on the Yudu website, I see no reason why these paints wouldn't work.  Unless, of course, they do something odd to their screens.  I guess I'll find out.

Here are my results:

I plan to start selling these on my Etsy site.  I just put one up.  We'll see if anyone is interested!

YuDu Part 2: An Actual Project

Last night, I decided to practice with the screen I showed on my last crafting blog post.  While I didn't do the best job preparing the screen, I thought at least a few of the words I burned in would come through okay.  I decided to start with "1337." 

In the last post, I mentioned that I thought I had messed up because the words came through fuzzy instead of crisp.  Well, at least concerning 1337, the problem was with how I pulled the paint.  There is an art to this.  If you pull too much paint across the screen, the design will not be crisp; if you pull too little paint, you won't fill in the entire design.  And if you think you haven't pulled enough paint, DON'T lift the screen to check, then put it back down.  It does not tend to want to go back to the exact same place, so your design will be messed up.

After practicing my pulling technique on paper, I finally got the courage to print on a onesie.  I think it went pretty well.  For the first one, I used light purple dye.  On the second, I tried pulling more than one color at once.

Now Kira can proclaim her uber leetness to everyone!  What Mom wouldn't be proud?

YuDu Screen Printer: Trial 1

After the Great Computer Virus debacle and a failed attempt at printing my own template (Epson + transparency paper=fail), I finally got to try out my Yudu Personal Screen Printer.  If you aren't familiar with screen printing, the short explanation is that you take a screen, which looks something like this:

 (Well, okay, this is a screen after I've added the stuff to it.  Pretend it is blank) and add an emulsion sheet, then use the machine to burn in the image or words that you want to paint on something.  Here is the machine:

 Once you get whatever you want printed on the machine, you place it on the top, like so:

 You put your paper, shirt, hand, etc under the screen, then you run paint over the screen.  The image is (theoretically) transferred, and you can print as many things as you want with that screen.

You may be wondering why I don't have any pictures of what I painted.  Well... I was able to tell you the fundamentals of using the screen printing machine, but I have yet to master it.  The paint came through kind of blotchy in places so I'm thinking that either I didn't get the emulsion sheet (the dark colored part) on right or I messed up somewhere else in the process.  I may have simply not pulled the paint across the screen right.  But I can tell you what I learned:

1) The tutorial video shows a lady wetting the screen with a wet paper towel.  She made it sound simple, but she LIED!  Wet that screen A LOT.  I messed up the first emulsion sheet because I foolishly followed her directions.  The sheet didn't stick, but I didn't know any better.  The one you see in the picture above still wasn't quite right.  There is a learning curve for this.

2) Not all inkjet printers will print your design on the transparency.  My Epson printer made the words look like text from a psychedelic 60s band poster.  Amusing, but useless.  I had to go get the transparency printed at Kinkos, but that only cost about 85 cents so no big deal.

3) Pulling the ink across the screen isn't as easy as you might expect.  Have something to test on first.

I did have fun, though.  Hopefully, I will have a finished product to post soon!